Comments

This patch implements the NetClientInfo.receive_iov method for the
e1000 device emulation. In this way a network backend that uses
qemu_sendv_packet() can deliver the fragmented packet without
requiring an additional copy in the frontend/backend network code
(nc_sendv_compat() function).
The existing method NetClientInfo.receive has been reimplemented
using the new method.
Signed-off-by: Vincenzo Maffione <v.maffione@gmail.com>
---
hw/net/e1000.c | 70 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------
1 file changed, 58 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
I propose this patch also because our research group (University of Pisa,
Department of Computer Engineering) is working on the e1000 device
(optimizations and paravirtual extensions) and we have patches to
support the VALE switch as a network backend (see
http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/vale/).
The VALE backend uses qemu_sendv_packet() to send fragmented packets: For
this reason we think it could be interesting to better support these packets
with e1000.